The Dermatology Blog » Natural Remedies

Extract from White Birch Tree Relieves Itch

Dr. Benabio — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:37:04 +0000

The forest is full of things that make you itchy: poison ivy, poison oak, mosquitoes, chiggers. But for the wise adventurer, the forest also provides a way to heal your itch. The remedy might be found in the beautiful white birch tree.

White birch trees are ubiquitous in cold climates. A photo of the white tree against white snow is iconic of New England winters. A bark extract called Betulin (a terpene like tea tree oil) has been shown in animal studies to be antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and to aid in wound healing. Research presented at the annual congress of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venerology showed that a cream containing betulin significantly reduced itching in red, irritated skin in psoriasis and eczema patients.

The study is only preliminary, and betulin will need to be tested in rigorous trials to see if the extract makes a cream much better than placebo cream; however, betulin is already available in creams in Europe.

So how do you get the extract out of the bark if you’re itchy while hiking in a forest? I’ll wait for Bear Grylls to show us on a future episode of Man Vs. Wild. No doubt a fire and half a plastic bottle will be needed.

Photo: Nicolas T

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Vitamin D Might Improve Cancer Survival

Dr. Benabio — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 01:02:12 +0000

The vitamin story of the next decade will be vitamin D. As we learn more about this fascinating prohormone, we realize how important it is to maintaining health and preventing disease.

Research from the Mayo Clinic has linked vitamin D levels to improved cancer survival in patients with lymphoma. They found that their B-cell lymphoma patients who were vitamin D deficient were more likely to have progression of their cancer than patients with normal vitamin D levels. Death was twice as likely in the vitamin deficient patients compared to the lymphoma patients with normal vitamin D.

Getting sun is an efficient way to increase your vitamin D levels; however, your skin only makes vitamin D when UVB radiation is plentiful. For most of the United States during winter, the sun is too low in the sky to provide adequate UVB to produce any vitamin D — even if you were to like naked out in the snow (note, DermDoc does not recommend lying naked in the snow).

During winter months vitamin D is best gotten from diet and supplements. Eat lots of fish like salmon, mackerel or sardines (note, DermDoc does not recommend eating lots of sardines). Better yet, take vitamin D3 supplements in doses of 2,000 IU a day to help build your depleted vitamin stores during winter.

Photo: Grant MacDonald, Flickr.com

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Manuka Honey Fights MRSA Infection

Dr. Benabio — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:22:41 +0000

I’ve always loved September. I loved the crispness in the air, the sounds of a football game, the feel of brand new textbooks. OK, so I was kind of a nerd. But school was easier when I was young. For one thing, there were no MRSA infections to worry about.

MRSA is a staph bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics. The bacteria infects you when your skin’s protective barrier is disrupted by small scrapes or other injuries. Once it has a foothold, it can spread aggressively leading to painful, even dangerous infections.

School-age athletes are particularly vulnerable to MRSA because the bacteria likes to spread in locker rooms and on contaminated sports equipment (but not on chemistry flasks, so I guess I would have been safe).

Because the bacteria is resistant to many antibiotics, it is difficult to treat. In rare cases, it can be life threatening, defying all medical therapies.

One of the ways we can reduce the risk of drug resistant bacteria like MRSA is to reduce our use of antibiotics. Researchers at the University of Wales Institute have been working on this problem and looked at an old home remedy to treat infection: honey. Honey has natural antibacterial properties and has been used to aid in wound healing. But, they asked, how would honey fare against MRSA, the staph superbug?

They found that in the laboratory, manuka honey does kill MRSA bacteria. If it turns out that it also works when applied to real patients, then we might be able to use medicinal honey to treat minor cuts and abrasions or to treat superficial staph infections without resorting to antibiotics. However, don’t try try this at home, as yet, this is not yet an approved, safe treatment for staph infections.

Staph infections, especially MRSA infections, can be serious. If you suspect that you or your child has a staph infection, then see a physician.

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Pineapple’s Bromelain for Bruises

Dr. Benabio — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:38:55 +0000

Bruising is an inevitable part of life, especially if you are a woman. Sometimes procedures such as Botox® injections or laser treatment of blood vessels cause bruising. Bromelain, a substance found in pineapples, might help minimize bruising from cosmetic procedures (or from walking into the coffee table).

Bromelain is a natural substance derived from pineapples. It has been used medicinally for years because of its anti-clotting and anti-inflammatory effects. Like anti-inflammatories, such as aspirin or naproxen, bromelain blocks inflammation from developing and is used to treat sports injuries, arthritis, and sinusitis as well as pain and swelling.

Bromelain might also both prevent blood clots from forming and aid in breaking them down. As such, it has been promoted to reduce the risk of blood clots in conditions such as thrombophlebitis. Thus far, there is good evidence that taking bromelain reduces inflammation, but at this time, there are either few or no good studies on any of its other uses.

Because of its anti-inflammatory and anti-blood clotting properties, it has been suggested that bromelain might be a good supplement to help minimize pain and redness associated with cosmetic procedures and to help resolve bruises that might develop as a side effect.

Unfortunately, most of the bromelain in pineapple is in the stem, not the fruit, so eating lots of pineapple will not give you enough of a dose to have any effect. However, bromelain is available as a dietary supplement.

Although there is no standard recommended dose for bromelain consumption, this substance has been used in different doses ranging from 200 mg to 2000 mg.

Bromelain is considered safe; however, a higher incidence of adverse events including headache, gastrointestinal symptoms and cutaneous rash have been observed with higher doses.

Of course, you should always talk to your physician before starting any supplement, including bromelain. In particular, if you take anticoagulant medications such as warfarin and aspirin or have a history of ulcers, then it might not be recommended for you.

Post written by Jeffrey Benabio, MD. You might also like:

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6 Ways to Keep Your Feet Fungus Free

Dr. Benabio — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:18:46 +0000

Foot fungus kills beautiful feet.

Athlete’s foot or foot fungus and toenail fungus affects people of all ages. It is itchy and ugly and can destroy your toenails. Here are six tips to keep your feet fungus-free and beautiful.

Foot fungus can be hard to treat — the best strategy is to keep your feet from getting fungus in the first place. Always wear flip-flops in places like public showers, locker rooms, and pools (walking on your tip-toes across the locker room floor won’t protect you). Don’t share towels, shower sponges, shoes, or socks. Wash your socks in hot water every time you wear them.
Keep your feet dry. You should wash your feet everyday, including between the toes (you know you don’t). Then dry your feet completely, including between the toes (you know you don’t); you can even use a hair dryer before putting on your socks. If you have sweaty feet, consider using a foot antiperspirant to minimize wetness. Wear loose fitting, synthetic socks that allow your feet to breathe and wick moisture away.
Apply an antifungal foot cream to your feet and toes everyday. Any over the counter antifungal cream will work; I recommend generic clotrimazole cream because its effective and a lot less expensive than other antifungals. If you don’t like applying cream, then try antifungal foot sprays such as Tinactin® (tolnaftate) or antifungal foot powders such as Desenex® (miconaozle). Spray antifungal spray powder like Oder Eaters® (tolnaftate) directly in your sneakers or sandals to block the growth of fungus.
The best treatment for nail fungus is oral antifungal pills. However, pills, such as Lamisil® (terbenifine) or Nizoral® (ketoconazole), can have serious side effects and require blood tests to monitor for complications. Combining oral antifugals with a topical antifungal cream everyday gives you the best chance of a cure. If you want to treat toenail fungus at home, then consider applying Vicks VapoRub® to your nails everyday. You can also try soaking your feet in a solution of one part Listerine with one part white vinegar. The alcohols in the Vicks VapoRub® and in the Listerine® might help eliminate the fungus. A third option is to try applying tea tree oil to your nails everyday. None of these home remedies are likely to cure toenail fungus, but they can help improve the appearance of your nails and are relatively harmless. Unfortunately, if your toenails are completely infected with fungus, there is less than 50% chance you will have a complete, long-lasting cure. Even with the strongest antifungal treatments available, only 50-70% of people clear their toenails; and those who are cured become reinfected 50% of the time!
Keep your toenails clean and trimmed short. You can scrape the crumbly material from under your nails, but do it gently. Vigorous scraping won’t clean out nail fungus and will cause your nail to lift off your toe or to fall off all together. Remember to wash your hands after every time you touch your feet or nails and to clean your toenail clipper and nail files with alcohol before using them again.
If you have successfully eliminated your foot fungus or toenail fungus, remember that you still are at risk of getting the fungus again. Consider getting new sneakers, sandals and socks, and apply an antifungal foot cream or powder to your feet everyday to prevent a regrowth of fungus on your now fungus-free feet.

Post written by Jeffrey Benabio, MD. You might also like:

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Green Tea Extract Treats Genital Warts

Dr. Benabio — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:38:03 +0000

Genital warts are common and difficult to treat. They are caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV), the same family of viruses that causes warts on hands and feet, and even the proverbial warts on old women’s chins. These different types of warts are caused by different strains of the same virus.

Genital or venereal warts appear as skin colored or brown bumps in the genital area of men and women. They can be small or large and can look bumpy or cauliflower-like.

They are easily spread from person to person by contact with the wart. Some people fight off the virus quickly and the warts go away. However, most people have the virus for months or years and sometimes never clear the virus. Once genital warts have taken hold, they can be difficult to treat.

Most wart treatments rely on destroying the skin where the virus is living. The fastest way to treat them is to freeze them with liquid nitrogen. Freezing the wart destroys the skin and incites your immune system to finish off the job. Other treatments like electrocautery, surgery, tricloracetic acid, and using podophylin all destroy the skin in a controlled manner to eliminate the wart. Usually multiple treatments are needed.

An interesting study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology has added green tea extract to the list of treatments. We know that green tea is a wonderful antioxidant; this current research shows us that it has potent antiviral activity as well.

Researchers from Argentina found that sinecatechins, extracts from green tea, were an effective and well tolerated treatment for external genital and anal warts.

They randomly assigned 502 adults with genial warts to either a green tea sinecatechins ointment or to an inactive, placebo ointment for up to 16 weeks or until the warts cleared.
In the sinecatechins groups, warts cleared completely in about 60% of patients compared to about 35% of subjects in the control group. (The 35% cleared the warts because the warts do sometimes go away on their own).

Sinecatechins ointment, sold as Veregen, is approved for the topical treatment of genital warts in adults.

Unfortunately, this research does not mean that either drinking green tea or applying green tea bags to your warts will treat them. It will not. Nor will onion extract, vinegar, vitamin E or any other do-it-yourself therapy.

Because genital warts are common and are embarrassing, there are countless home remedies and internet sites touting cures. Buyer beware. These treatments are unproven; they usually fail to treat the wart, and in some instances can be harmful, causing burns to your skin and scarring.

Not properly treating the wart can also be dangerous. Certain strains of genital warts can develop into penile cancer in men and cervical cancer in women. If you have warts, then it is important that you see a physician for evaluation and for treatment.

Women should also consider getting the genital wart vaccine, Gardasil. This might not completely prevent you from getting genital warts, but it can protect you against the strains of the HPV virus that are known to cause cervical cancer in women.

Post written by Jeffrey Benabio, MD. You might also like:

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How to Save Money on Facial Moisturizers: Stop Washing Your Face

Dr. Benabio — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:53:16 +0000

What is the ultimate in natural skin care products? Moisturizers from your own skin. Treat yourself everyday to an exclusive facial moisturizer, better than anything you’ll find at Neiman Marcus. Let your skin produce its own natural oils and don’t wash them away.

It always impresses me how women will spend hundreds of dollars on skin cleansers and toners, then spend hundreds more dollars on exclusive facial moisturizers to replace the “cellular” oils that they just stripped off.

Here is a great tip: there is no better moisturizer for your face than its own natural oils. Your skin goes to great trouble to produce “exclusive,” highly modified fats, like ceramides and cholesterols to keep its surface smooth and well protected. Why not keep them there? The best natural cure for dry, dull skin is your skin’s oils.

If you have normal to dry skin:

Wash your face at night with a gentle cleanser such as Neutrogena Fresh Foaming Cleanser. Be sure to remove all traces of makeup, especially along the hairline. Rinse well and pat dry.
In the morning, wash with just water. Skip the soap.

If you have oily skin:

Wash your face at night with a gentle cleanser such as Neutrogena Deep Clean Invigorating Daily Cleanser. Keep in mind that scrubbing harder will not make your skin less oily. Over-scrubbing can actually irritate your skin and cause it to secrete more oils. Rinse well and pat dry.
If you are still too oily, consider adding a toner in the morning such as Neutrogena Deep Clean Invigorating Dual Action Toner which contains salicylic acid.

The bottom line: allow the natural oils in your skin to stay on your skin, giving you a truly natural glow.

Photo credit: Kenna Takahashi, Flickr.com

How to Make a Chocolate Facial

Dr. Benabio — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:15:30 +0000

One of the hottest spa trends right now is chocolate facials. Yep, a facial using chocolate. But is it worth grinding down your left over chocolate Easter bunny to make a facial frosting? Maybe.

Chocolate has several ingredients which can potentially affect your skin. Cocoa beans, of which chocolate is made, are high in antioxidant phenolic phytochemicals (polyphenols), including flavonoids, procyanidin, and resveratrol. In fact, they are present at such high concentrations that cocoa actually has higher antioxidant potential than other heavy weight antioxidants such as green tea or red wine (J Agric Food Chem 2003;51:792-5). Not all chocolate is high in flavonoids, however. For example, white chocolate has no flavonoids while dark, high-cocoa-content chocolate has much higher flavonoids than does milk chocolate.

Chocolate also contains fats such as cocoa butter or shea butter. Both of these are used routinely as topical moisturizers and as anti-inflammatory agents. Shea butter can also used as a skin softener.

Most studies of the health benefits of chocolate have looked at anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular effects of eating it, not the benefit of applying to your skin. I did however find one study* which showed that topical application of cocoa plant extracts containing polyphenols and xanthine derivitives prevented wrinkles from forming in mice who were exposed to ultraviolet light. If nothing else, it would be a delicious, relaxing treatment. That is, if you can keep yourself from licking it off.

So where can you find a chocolate facial? Lush, a handmade vegan cosmetic company in London, UK, makes a Cupcake Face Mask.

How do you make your own homemade chocolate facial mask? (Courtesy of Food Blogga)

1/3 cup dark cocoa

3 tbs heavy cream

1/4 cup honey

2 tbs pureed or powdered oatmeal

Mix all the ingredients together and apply. Let it sit for 15 minutes and then rinse off with warm water using a gentle circular method to exfoliate.

*Note: Despite exhaustive searching, I could not find any studies on the value of applying Cadbury Easter Egg filling to your skin. You might as well just eat it.

Vitamin C and Skin Care

Dr. Benabio — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 14:24:20 +0000

Vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid, is a popular natural ingredient used in skin care cosmetics. There are two mechanisms by which it can affect your skin.

First, vitamin C is an essential component for collagen synthesis. Without adequate vitamin C, the collagen in your skin would be malformed and your skin and gums would not heal properly. This is obvious in patients who are clinically deficient of vitamin C, a condition called scurvy. Among other problems, scurvy patients have bleeding from their gums and poorly healing wounds.

Secondly, vitamin C is a potent antioxidant. Like other antioxidants, it helps to prevent skin damage and wrinkles by soaking up harmful free radicals.

The problem is how to get the vitamin C into your skin. Your skin is designed to keep things out (on the whole, a good idea), but this makes getting medications and creams below the surface, where they exert their effects, rather difficult.

In order for vitamin C to penetrate the skin, it needs to be in an acidic environment, and it needs to be in a high concentration in the product. Unfortunately products that contain 5-10% ascorbic acid are expensive and it’s unlikely that products with low amounts of ascorbic acid have any measurable impact on your skin.

In addition, topical vitamin C is highly degradable. When exposed to air it oxidizes and its free radical soaking capabilities are muted — it becomes an inert, yet nicely citrus fragranced, cream. This is obvious if you have a vitamin C cream at home; you will see that the cream around the cap turns brown (like an apple slice) indicating that the vitamin C in it has oxidized.

If your are going to purchase a topical vitamin C cream, this is one place where more expensive might be worth the cost. La Roche-Posay makes Active C, a nightly eye cream with 5% vitamin C.

If you are trying to save a few dollars this year, I recommend just eating a citrus fruit everyday. You need only 90 mg of vitamin C daily which can be found in a couple of orange slices. Eating a whole orange or other citrus fruit will easily give you many times the amount of vitamin C you need.

There is no evidence that taking vitamin C supplements or consuming huge amounts of vitamin C will have any impact on your skin. Once you have an adequate supply of vitamin C to make collagen, having a huge oversupply is not likely to lead to more collagen production. But it certainly will lead to lots more vitamin C in your urine — it’s simply eliminated by your kidneys.

Other foods high in vitamin C can be found here.

Garlic Treaments for Skin Problems

Dr. Benabio — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:40:08 +0000

Garlic is a member of the onion family and has been used for medicinal purposes since the times of the pharaohs of Egypt. There are a few studies linking garlic to skin care.

In one study, ajoene, a component of garlic, produced a clinical response in patients with basal cell carcinoma skin cancer. It was shown to induce apoptosis (death) of cancer cells in 17 of 21 patients with basal cell skin cancers. This is interesting research, but unfortunately does not make garlic a viable treatment for skin cancer yet; in these patients the skin cancers became smaller, but were not cured.

Basal cell carcinoma should be treated with destructive surgery such as electrodessication and curettage (ED&C), simple surgical excision, or a Mohs procedure. In some instances it can be treated with prescription anti-cancer creams. Diagnosis and treatment of any skin cancer should be discussed with your physician.

Garlic has also been used as a short term treatment for athletes foot (tinea pedis). In one study, application of ajoene cream resulted in cure in 27 of 34 patients after 7 days of treatment with no recurrences after 3 months.

Although, if fungus ridden feet are keeping you from dating, I am not sure that a garlic cream is your best option.

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